Going To Copenhagen Empty-Handed
On Friday, Denmark's climate and energy minister, Connie Hedegaard, who will be chairing U.N.-sponsored climate talks in December in Copenhagen, said President Obama needs to do more on climate. "It is hard to imagine that he will be receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Dec. 10 and then come empty-handed to Copenhagen a week later," she said.
But there's no way between now and then that Obama can get a strong climate bill through Congress.
Over the next months, the White House needs to focus on health care if it's to have any hope of coming up with anything more than Big Pharma and the private insurance companies want.
This is the cost of trying to do so much so quickly. Initiatives revert to powerful industry lobbyists because there's no time to organize countervailing power. When he's trying to do everything at once, the President can't mobilize public opinion behind any one thing. Progressive voices (which have difficulty being heard even under the best of circumstances) drown each other out because they're hollering over one another.
Climate change legislation is moving forward -- but big polluters have shaped much of it. As I noted recently, the Waxman-Markey climate bill, passed by the House last June, gives away 85 percent of pollution permits to the nation's biggest polluters, and the "cap" it proposes on overall carbon emissions would cut greenhouse gas emissions only by an estimated 2 to 4 percent by 2020 compared to the UN reference year of 1990. The Kerry-Boxer bill has a stronger cap on emissions but it's still far short of what's necessary -- and it leaves out the hardest part, which is the actual cap-and-trade mechanism.
Why has so little been accomplished? Because coal, shale, oil, big manufacturers, and utilities -- the big old polluters (BOPs) -- have beaten back anything better.
The only real countervailing powers on climate change are industries that stand to gain from stronger legislation -- mostly nuclear and ethanol, along with a smattering of companies that have invested in wind, biomass, and solar. But they're no match for the BOPs. Nor do their bottom lines necessarily match what's good for the world.
Yes, the Environmental Protection Agency is moving forward on its own efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, and the White House is quietly using the threat of the EPA doing more as a prod to get the BOPs on board with legislation that the White House says will be easier on them than what the EPA comes up with. But that's no real threat. The BOPs know they can keep the EPA tied up in litigation for years.
So here's my suggestion. The White House should tell Congress it's raising the bar on climate change but is simultaneously putting the current legislation on hold -- until it can focus the public's attention on it. That is, until after a worthy piece of healthcare legislation is on the President's desk.
Arriving in Copenhagen strongly committed to fight for a large reduction in greenhouse gases, even if that means empty hands at the time, is better than arriving there with a weak and ineffective law.
Cross-posted from Robert Reich's Blog
Carl Pope: Slouching Towards Copenhagen
What do we make of the prospects for global action on the climate crisis, given recent events both in the U.S. Congress and in the international conversations leading up to Copenhagen?
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Satellite data indicate the planet cooled significantly from 2007 to 2008, said Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville. This winter figures to be the coldest in decades, says the Farmer's Almanac. The ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctic are getting thicker. Dr. Mojib Latif, a scientist on whom the UN relied heavily for its original alarmist forecasts, now says the planet will cool for the next 20 years.
As the evidence moves decisively against them, alarmists are escalating their rhetoric. Britain's Prince Charles -- whose academic credentials are even weaker than Al Gore's -- told business leaders in Brazil we have less than 100 months to avert climate catastrophe.
But opinion polls in Australia, Britain and here indicate people no longer are buying what they're selling. The Society of Environmental Journalists may not notice, but ordinary people can tell when it's cold outside.
The nuclear lobby has been working overtime, and their communications strategy has been in high gear too. They placed two editorials in the NY Times recently, one by Tom Friedman and one by 2 Senators [Kerry and graham].
And, they have Obama's ear. He even mentioned nuclear energy in his talk in New Orleans. I'm sure they are here too, and may reply to this.
But until we solve the transportation, disposal and decommissioning problems, and can be more certain of security, I say no to nuclear. Three GE Engineers warned the world that it was not possible to make a completely safe reactor-- this before Chernobyl. Perhaps someone would like to ask the surviving engineers about this now.
Let'stake the $$$$$$$$$$$$ they plan to invest in nuclear and use it to invest in research that will cut the cost of solar, and other local [e.g. microbial] sources.
Reducing carbon and pollutants is a negative good. Are there positive methods, methods of actually reducing the carbon and pollutants that are in the air. Planting more trees is a start. How effective is that, how much more can be done? For a start, we might price real costs and weight benefits and demerits more accurately.
Negative methods of doing good have myriad ways of failing. Taller smokestacks cause acid rain down wind. Absorbent materials turn into huge piles of garbage. Nuclear energy is such a bad idea that the industry couldn't exist except as the federal government provides its insurance or otherwise subsidizes it. Solar energy and wind power might work when the infra structure is in place and paid for.
Reich's position begs the question of why hasn't Obama made decoupling ( disconnecting production from profit for utilities) a national mandate? It wouldn't require anything but his saying so as it is the state PUCs that would execute such a policy, it's a change in business model, not creation of a bureaucracy, and it has a proven success and procedure model in the California utilities which have making money through efficiency as part of their business. In the last thirty years, California has maintained its economic position in the world and yet uses the same amount of energy per capita as in 1977, while the rest of the country has increased per capita usage 50%.
Maybe if the administration did some easy things first, more would get done, there would be momentum and those whose opposition is based on the idea that all government is bad would see some positives from initiatives that aren't big government.
The only interests against decoupling are utilities that don't want to learn new ways to make money.
Agreed! The BOPs are of course going to shape climate legislation. I just read somehwere that the BOPs are washing their smokestacks with water that ends up back in the streams, rivers and lakes that we all use. Clean air. Dirty Water!!! Greed powers all of the industries! Profit, at any cost! Here's to capitalism! George Bush would just love this!
My only thought when I read that headline is GOOD! Cap and tax will destroy the already weak economy.
"Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.
I don't know about you lefties, but I don't have the money to pay for skyrocketing electricity rates.
I don't know about you righties, but I'd like to see the reference to that supposed quote.
Google the quote and you'll get 11,000 hits.
I don't know about you righties, but the US government doesn't have the money to relocate all the people and assets presently located on America's coastlines.
Meanwhile: let electricity rates rise as high as they must. I invested in solar energy five years ago, with net metering. It cost me less than your shiny new SUV did. I haven't paid a dime for electricity since. Why don't you try it?
Even righties will learn to like solar power out here in California. Schwarzenegger just signed a revision of our net metering laws. Beginning in 2011, I will be PAID for sharing my surplus energy. Right now, my surplus energy is a gift to the Pacific Gas and Electric company. I know how much you righties hate to share -- so our new law should be just the thing for you!
I don't know how old you are or how versed you are in the ways of the world. But, a little bit of history is in order. In the late 70s and 80s, acid rain was all the rage. Whether it was Germany's Black Forest or America's forests in the east, acid rain was destroying them. So, what was done? A cap and trade system was put in place that eventually led to a substantial dimunition of the problem. Certainly, a cap and trade system could help with global warming. Of course, it is also true that if the initial conditions are botched (the European system) much work has to be done in order to repair a faulty cap and trade system.
Cap and trade is not the only tool available, though it is one that industry understands and can support. One could also ban outright certain practices (burning coal without scrubbers, etc.). Such an approach was used when chloro-flo
Or, is your response simply knee-jerk? I thought the Know Nothing Party went out of fashion in the 1850s. Oh well. We still have the Republicans.
"Whether it was Germany's Black Forest or America's forests in the east, acid rain was destroying them. So, what was done? A cap and trade system was put in place that eventually led to a substantial dimunition of the problem."
Van der Graaf, let me add one observation to your excellent comments about the possibilities of a cap-and-trade system.
A few years ago, some Democratic lawmakers suggested that we should simply raise fossil-fuel taxes to combat global warming. Republicans howled. They said that taxes were not a "free market solution."
What was the GOP's idea of a free-market solution? A CAP AND TRADE SYSTEM. And now that a government led by Democrats has agreed to give it to them -- surprise, they're against it.
One should not go empty handed, but one should also not go as did Thomas Becker, Denmark's Chief Climate Negotiator. He has just resigned his position.
Becker has left office after not presenting sufficient documentation for expensive restaurant bills. One bill for 39 people allegedly included 37 bottles of red wine.
Sounds reasonable to me... there's only 4 glasses in a 750mL bottle. So 4 * 37 / 39 = 3.8 glasses per person, less than the 5 drinks per person that would be considered excessive "binge drinking."
It's not that the President has tried to do too much, it's that the Congress has tried - and succeeded - in doing too little.
Worth the watch on this video, help push it around the globe...
http://www
"This is the cost of trying to do so much so quickly."
Dr. Reich, we are running out of time to fix health care and do something about global warming. If we're to have any appreciable effect on emissions we need legislation ASAP. These priorities are presenting themselves with urgency -- it's not something Obama CAN choose.
Seconded..
I can remember when the Kyoto Treaty was touted as the world's savior. Then it was voted down under Clinton 95 to nothing. Why? Because it put no burden of reform on the up-and-coming big polluters like China and India. Now, China out pollutes us. Just offering a "solution" and telling everyone to get on board (or they're meanies) is often no solution at all.
Now, the latest reports say that there has been no increased global warming for 11 years and that other factors may be behind all of this climate change anyway. Let's not produce another Kyoto Treaty just to be seen as doing something. There is way too much politics involved in this issue. We need truth and realistic actions.
There's a whole lot of wishful thinking going on around the world - last year it involved the Presidency of the USA, this year the "Leader" of the Free World (everybody except Korea, I guess, these days).
Barack Obama is the adult in the room now recognized by everyone else (almost, anyway) in the world - especially by those who want to remain children and push off onto him the responsibility for getting into the fray and actually beginning to resolve our problems.
Our problem is that nobody else want to be an adult and take the initiative to begin resolving problems on their own - let Barack (Mikey) do it.
What problems did this President solve?
Well, he gave all those speeches and increased global warming even more with all that hot air...lol.
"Arriving in Copenhagen strongly committed to fight for a large reduction in greenhouse gases, even if that means empty hands at the time, is better than arriving there with a weak and ineffective law."
Neither option sounds particularly good to me. "Strongly committed" would be in word only. Dr. Reich, as someone who once served in the Clinton Administration, you should know the value of a progressiv
I will be writing my representatives urging them to support the Boxer-Kerry initiative. It's far from what we need, but it's the best option on the table at this time. Since one of my representatives is Barbara Boxer herself, I have only two letters to write.
At the last minute during the debate on Social Security, FDR got up and laid down the law to his Democratic Party by throwing in his hat with those who did not want to make paying into Social Security voluntary for corporations. It was a Democrat who had sold out to lobbyists and proposed the voluntary amendment which is what the lobbyists and special interests wanted. If that had happened, Social Security would have probably dwindled away into nothing after a few years. It was FDR who in the eleventh hour saw what was at stake and took his stand.
Up to now, Obama, has talked about 'preferred' when referring to a public option. In the meantime, the lobbyists have turned this health care reform on its head. It's now a give a way to the insurance industry bringing in millions of new customers without any viable cost containment measures. It's another boon to the pharmeceutical industry which will keep up the anti free market policies of the government not being able to bargain down prices thus retaining their monopolistic control over their part of the market. In other words, while the people will be held captive and forced to buy insurance, the monopolies get to ensure market socialism for themeselves. It's time for Obama to find his inner FDR and take a stand. After today, only 'preferring' a public option rather than demanding it will no longer cut it.
I never thought I would say this but thank God for lobbyists. If it were not for them this cap-n-tax folly and the full monte health scare takeover would have led us to bankruptcy even quicker than the path we are on.
I agree !!!! Congress is accomplishing all the things we can afford to do.......n
Circumvent the BOPs with fraud free, binding public referendums. If the Swiss can do it, why can't America?
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